What He Did: Bale dropped from 180 pounds to about 120 pounds. Then he bulked back up to 220 pounds.
Why He Did It: To portray an anorexic, insomniac factory worker in
The Machinist, then he got strong again to be Batman in
The Dark Knight.
What He Ate: To lose the weight, Bale went into starvation mode, eating a can of tuna, an apple and... nothing else. Every day.
His Workout: To beef up after deflating himself for
The Machinist, Bale had to kick-start his metabolism, which had been destroyed after starving himself. He used intense weight workouts, resistance weight training and plyometric circuit training, adding in martial arts training and lots of sprints, lunges, squats, chin-ups and
high pulls.
Plus: Bale wanted to get down to 100 pounds for
The Machinist, but the movie producers told him it would be too detrimental to his health.
Christian Says: “I'd done
American Psycho and I bulked up purely for that part. But people start just going, 'Oh yeah, that guy's a real workout fanatic,' and that's not me, that's Patrick Bateman. It was a nice way to kill that dead by just destroying your body completely.”
Difficulty Level: 10
